What the Numbers Say: People in the South were especially affected by serious heat illness.
The researchers used data on emergency room visits from an electronic surveillance program used by states and the federal government to detect the spread of diseases.
They compiled the number of heat-related emergency room visits in different regions of the country and compared them to data from the previous five years.
Nearly 120,000 heat-related emergency room visits were recorded in the surveillance program last year, with more than 90 percent of them occurring between May and September, the researchers found.
Heat illness often occurs gradually over the course of hours, and it can cause major damage to the body’s organs.
Locations:
Arkansas , Louisiana, New Mexico , Oklahoma, Texas